Late on election night, there are plenty of things everyone would really rather not think about -- not after such a long, grinding, 4-year campaign. And that's probably a good indication that we should think of them. Now. Even if we get queasy.

I dunno about you, but my own private version of Nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue managed to leak out and stain my innermost thoughts, even now, fully tired, and my guard down.

After brushing aside all the shouts of Peanuts! Popcorn! Hot Dogs! Cold Drinks! and ducking around vendors and crowds, I found myself standing alone, under a huge banner, overhead: Step Right Up and Make a Prediction for the Big Day (TM).

Truth be told? Either way we regular folk will be hosed, and the mega-billionaires will win --another notch on their belts for their victory, more tightening on ours, in the loss.

How so? Well, just shooting from the hip, so to say...

Romney gets in, we're triple-screwed and quadruply-shafted by the Billionaire's Puppet Agenda and Or-Else Club steering a spineless dufus from tragedy to disaster and back again, profit-taking every step of the way.

Plus, there could be a good chance -- meaning very, very bad -- of riots in a close count or other signs of another possible vote-hijacking, fueled by yet another round of betrayals for The Faceless Minorities (as they Club'd call them) to ponder and eat.

And, if you think Romulus and Remus -- sorry: Romney-Ryan -- will have time to ensure things go well for the average, middle-class voter who vaulted them ahead of the pack, or establish a glorious new Rome for American Empire, you're either off your meds or have taken a whole bottle.

Never happen. Too much looting to do. Can't talk now.

On the other hand, if Obama's back in for another four, the Old Rich White Butthead's Society, and other such sporting men's clubs, will re-triple its efforts to kill the country, scrape all the wealth into their piles, and throttle anything good that might have been overlooked or forgotten in their opening rounds.

Plus, being the frustrated Old White Bastards they are, and, having been so rudely turned away from power, after wanting the Bush years again so desperately for the last four years, let's say they finally snap, and are no longer bound by their one, thin thread of decency and morality they had remaining. Then, these demons will bring in 1,000 pissed-off racists with extensive weapons collections, and have them dog the poor man everywhere he goes, looking for that one opening...

The Secret Service can't be everywhere. For mega-billionaires, money is nothing. If 1,000 pissed-off racists with weapons collections won't do the trick, they'll bring in 5,000. Unfortunately, as you well know, they'll have no trouble finding them, and many more, in the good ol' USA.

(Not convinced? Ever notice how every single shooting tragedy in the U.S. is always initiated by some right wing psycho with an overly-intimate weapons-lust and ammo-habit? If you're not convinced, name just one left-wing, joint-smoking-peacenik-commie-hippie type -- as the right wing lunatics would call them -- who've gotten pissed off and mowed down a bunch of innocent people in a berserk rage. Just one. Waiting.)

And if assassination isn't the mega-billionaires' choice, they'll create, spin, or otherwise trump up some ridiculous, boneheaded, vaporous charge to get that black man impeached, Senate-convicted, and out of the White House, once and for all.

(You don't think this scenario's possible, either? After Banana Republicans engineered a vicious impeachment for Clinton's affair? No matter how stupid, immoral, scandalous, or vile you think that act might have been, it's incredibly, microscopically small-beans compared to letting an entire administration, from Dubya and Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Gonzalez, and all the rest, talk a long, slow, unhurried walk out of office for war crimes -- for starters.

Those war crimes are prosecutable under the exact same standards and provisions of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials carried out by the Allies at the end of World War Two, resulting in execution and imprisonment. Instead, book tours and speeches are the reward for war crimes. You don't think mega-billionaires dropped a dime on that one?)

You know: I sure hope someone else is thinking about such things, keeping watch for them, trying to counter them. I'm an absolute nobody, and I'm thinking of them. I've feared for my country a handful of times before: For example, there were the murders of JFK, RFK, and MLK, Jr. And then, watching Reagan at work destroying unions, running up the national deficit, playing around with Iran-Contra. And then, 9/11, and fearing we'd take out our very big fly swatters and start swinging and swatting, everywhere, anywhere, before figuring out which bug had bitten us. And then, Dubya, a global disaster all by himself, who managed to also add in Iraq, Afghanistan, bank bailouts, tax cuts forever, running the national debt to new heights, starting the trend toward cutting the social safety net...

And then, there is now.

I like to think, that at this point -- notice the slippery wording here -- Obama's in again, but suspect we're in for a squeaker of a count where anything can happen. There's just too much play in the system, and no paper-trails or other safety checks. There's no way to do a recount on votes made electronically. There's no way to really know, when you leave, who you just voted for.

There's been too many dirty tricks, hanky panky, and suppression efforts for the full-court press to not be on. A candidate's son has a business interest in battleground-Ohio's voting machines? Last-minute voting rule changes by Republican office-holders in a dozen states? And on and on and on.

A close contest doesn't just make for a suspicious, breath-holding count. It's sad on many levels. It also means half the country, more or less, has been sold a bill of goods -- and are happy, content, remorse-free buyers. Scammed but still grinning, not yet aware they've been had -- just the way carpetbaggers and grifters like 'em. Provides plenty of time for getaways, you know.

These voters are no longer reachable by common sense, self interest, facts, logic, or reason. It will mean they've succumbed to racism, fear, greed, religious insanity, hate speech, willful ignorance, self-delusion, and been played for fools by the Mega-Billionaires Club already cobbling together the new feudalism, fueled by the new fascism.

A close contest, under so many suspicious circumstances, with no clean way to do a recount, and hampered by so many layers of dirty tricks, makes for a count that will not be trusted. Once again.

This could lead to mighty big trouble. But, the police departments all over the U.S. have had years, ramping up and militarizing, getting virtual Robocop suits ready, and the troops have already had their "just-in-case" security training in neighborhoods, so the powers won't much care if things spill over from peaceful protests.

Of course, it could be another sleeper, and, just as in 2000, when SCOTUS ended Democracy in the U.S. and played pick-a-president on its own terms, and the people did exactly nothing -- nothing except provide full and complete acceptance, without so much as a peep.

In any event, the undercurrents are not good. Either way this one works out, we will all continue to see actions that are not needed, and will continue to NOT see actions we know need to be taken. Plus, we'll have the extra-special good cheer of knowing that the only people having their "needs" attended to are the those in the top tenth of one percent, within the top one percent.